There is a picture in the circle of ghost stories. Both the style and the content are very ordinary, but it has spawned a large-scale discussion and derivative creation. It even has its own official Wiki.
This picture was created on 4chan in 2019. On this magical website, there is a discussion thread called Creepypasta, where users can share pictures that make people feel "uncomfortable" or "uneasy". Someone posted a picture like this:
At first glance, there was nothing wrong with it. The scene was in a dimly lit room, with a light yellow hue and a slightly tilted corridor, like a scene in a building or basement. The walls were covered with outdated yellow printed wallpaper, the floor was also covered with old yellow carpets, and there were a few fluorescent lights. The picture was monotonous, without any horror elements, but it made people feel "uncomfortable" after watching it for a long time. Until a user of Fantom added a comment to this picture:
"If you're not careful and you disconnect from reality (noclip) in the wrong place, you end up in the Backrooms, where there's nothing but the stench of damp old carpet, the maddening yellow drabness, the incessant hum of fluorescent lights at full power, and an area of about 600 million square miles randomly divided into empty rooms, trapping you.
If you hear something lingering around, you're going to die."
Thus, the urban horror legend Backrooms was officially born. "Noclip" is a term in video games, originating from games developed based on the Source engine, which refers to when the player accidentally passes through a boundary that would otherwise block their path, you can refer to the scene when Harry Potter enters Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
In the world view of Backrooms, the world where humans live every day is called "The Frontroom", and "Backrooms" is the back of it. Backrooms is a strange, dangerous world, composed of countless "Levels" of different properties, styles, and materials. When you accidentally fall into it, what awaits you is an infinitely extending void and various monster "Entities" with offensive power.
Backrooms has quickly entered mainstream culture from subculture. From popular science videos and urban legends to micro-films and independent games, derivative creations with it as the theme are endless. Last February, a 17-year-old creator Kane Pixels released the first Backrooms-themed short film on YouTube, which has received nearly 50 million views so far, showing its popularity. It is said that this series of short films will also be adapted into a movie.
Backrooms has also been adapted into many video games, most of which are released on Steam and Roblox, such as "Enter the Backrooms", "Noclipped" and "The Backrooms Project". Now, Backrooms has also entered the Web3 world, and we will soon be able to experience the Backrooms liminal world on the chain.
BACKROOMS, created on the Layer 1 public chain Sui Network, is an open world escape game of the massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) type. The project was launched in 2022, and the official website was launched in Q1 this year. The game is produced by Unreal Engine 5 (UE5.1 version) developed by Epic Games, and driven by ChatGPT, an intelligent AI robot under OpenAI. It has been internally tested on Steam. Backrooms plans to launch an iOS mobile game beta and a Steam PC version within the year.
BACKROOMS official website homepage
Project partners include blockchain networks Sui, Polygon, Solana, BNB Chain, NFT trading markets OpenSea, Souffl3, Magic Eden, game publishing platforms PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, etc. BACKROOMS is currently conducting a seed round of financing, has obtained investment intentions from Sui public chain, and is seeking other investment institutions to jointly complete this round of financing.
How to play BACKROOMS in the Web3 world?
BACKROOMS is set in a gloomy, endless maze of rooms. Like the original 4Chan artwork, these rooms and corridors will be filled with drab yellow walls, damp carpets, and humming fluorescent lights.
The goal of the game is very simple: players need to survive in this terrifying endless world and try to escape.
BACKROOMS Demo game interface
In the Web3 world of BACKROOMS, players first need to obtain a unique NFT ID. This NFT is the player's ticket to enter the virtual universe and is also the player's decentralized identity (Decentralized ID) in the BACKROOMS metaverse. All activities in the metaverse will be based on this NFT identity.
The game provides three types of competitive (PVP) modes:
Single Player Challenge (Free): Players try to pass the level within the specified time, and each level cleared will receive corresponding rewards;
Four-Player Race (Free): Players compete with three other players in the same room. The player who wins within the specified time will receive all rewards.
Twenty-player team battle (paid): Players compete in a room of twenty people, and the winner will win all rewards and 80% of the participation fee.
In BACKROOMS, players need to develop sophisticated strategies, cooperate with others, and keep moving forward in this strange and ever-changing alien world, striving to survive and ultimately escape.
In order to create a more realistic gaming experience for players in the virtual space, BACKROOMS also uses the latest ChatGPT tool to make the interaction in the game more in-depth and natural. ChatGPT can be used in many aspects of the game, such as task prompts. ChatGPT can help players better understand task goals and requirements; it can also be used in emotion recognition and personalized conversations. Lively and realistic NPC characters can greatly enhance the immersion of the game. ChatGPT can give NPCs more natural conversation capabilities, richer personalities and behavior patterns. BACKROOMS also applies ChatGPT to the design of non-linear plots, using ChatGPT to generate natural conversations and design more free plots to improve the playability of the game.
BACKROOMS Economic Model
For all kinds of Web3 game projects, fun game design is the first step, which determines whether loyal players can be accumulated. A perfect token economic model is the second step, which determines whether the project can be sustainable.
The BACKROOMS team has launched the system governance token BKS. BKS will serve as the basic governance certificate of the decentralized governance organization and provide incentives for ecological operation and maintenance.
The following is the token distribution:
20% of the total BKS supply will be allocated to the BACKROOMS project team, with a lock-up period of two years and a linear release in the third year;
15% of the total supply of BKS will be used as a static yield pool to provide interest income to users who stake BKS;
30% of the total BKS supply will be used as an in-game item revenue pool. All revenue generated by BKS sales and blind box project revenue will be invested in this pool: 70% of BKS is used to increase the liquidity trading pairs of BKS related tokens, 20% is used to pay for team and server operating costs, and 10% is used for marketing;
15% of the total supply of BKS will be distributed as a reward pool to players who win the game. In the three competitive modes mentioned above, winning players will receive BKS token rewards;
5% of the total BKS supply will be used to reward outstanding gamers, KOLs, outstanding community contributors, and excellent partners;
The remaining 15% of the total BKS supply will be used for private placement.
In addition to token incentives, BACKROOMS has also designed more DeFi gameplay, such as building systems similar to banks and stock exchanges, and integrating decentralized exchanges (DEX) and Launchpad into the game ecosystem, allowing players to trade and issue tokens freely.
At the same time, BACKROOMS will also launch multiple types of NFTs to promote economic circulation and interaction within the game ecosystem. In addition to the NFT identity cards mentioned above, BACKROOMS will also launch various game derivative NFTs, and create exhibition halls, markets and other buildings in the game as NFT markets, so that players can display, trade and exchange NFTs in the game.
Conclusion
From an ordinary picture posted by an anonymous user to being put on the big screen, we have witnessed the 4 years of Backrooms culture in the Web2 world from a niche community to mainstream culture. The Backrooms culture in the Web 3 world will have greater room for imagination. On-chain games are just the beginning. The ultimate goal of BACKROOMS is to create a social metaverse based on the Sui network and integrate various projects in the Sui ecosystem into the 3D scene of BACKROOMS, so that users will be able to participate in almost all Web3 activities in the BACKROOMS metaverse. Perhaps soon, we will be able to really cut from the "front room" of the real world to the "back room" behind it in one second, and socialize, entertain, shop, create, etc. in this alien space, but there is a premise: be timid and cautious!
